Report on the Forum on Media and Interculturalism

 

Hub Student Centre, Dublin City University

March 21& 22, 2002

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Maeve Connolly, Debbie Ging, Jackie Malcolm©

August 2002

Table of Contents

1. 1. Introduction......................................................................................................... 3

2. Planning Process.............................................................................................. 4

3. Structure of the Forum............................................................................... 6

 

Critical Frameworks, Presentations and Workshops................. 7

4. Citizenship Education...................................................................................... 7

4.1. Institutions, Policy and Terminology.............................................................................. 7

4.2. Citizenship Education: Introductory Remarks............................................................... 10

David Denby, School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies, DCU....................... 10

4.3. Intercultural Education: the University of Tomorrow? Ronit Lentin, MPhil in Ethnic
and Racial Studies, Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin............................. 12

4.4 Intercultural Guidelines for the Curriculum - Gerard Quirke,
National Council for Curriculum and Assessment..................................................    14

4.5. Citizenship Education: Workshop Session.................................................................... 15

4.6. Multiculturalism in National and International Contexts.............................................. 17

5. Print Journalism.............................................................................................. 19

5.1. Print Journalism: Professional Standards and Personal Experience........................... 19

5.2 Nuala Haughey - Social and Racial Affairs correspondent, The Irish Times.................. 21

5.3. metro eireann - Chinedu Onyejelem............................................................................. 23

5.4. Print Journalism: Workshop Session............................................................................ 25

6.Public Information........................................................................................... 27

6.1. Public Information Campaigns: Defining Audiences and Objectives............................ 27

6.2 Why is interculturalism replacing the outmoded concepts of  multiculturalism and assimilation?
Philip Watt, National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism......................... 29

6.3. Amnesty International’s Irish Section’s Print Campaign “Leadership Against Racism”,
Fiona Crowley, Legal Officer................................................................................................ 30

6.4. Citizen Traveller: An Overview, Jacinta Brack............................................................. 32

6.5. Public Information Campaigns: Workshop Session...................................................... 36

7. Broadcast Drama............................................................................................. 37

7.1 Broadcast Drama: Genres, Producers and Audiences................................................... 37

7.2 The Portrayal of Immigrants in Fair City - Mary Halpin................................................. 39

7.3. Broadcast Drama: Workshop Session........................................................................... 40

8. Broadcast Documentary & Current Affairs................................ 41

8.1. Broadcast Documentary & Current Affairs: Overview................................................... 41

8.2. Broadcast Documentary and Current Affairs: Workshop Sessions................................ 42

 

9. Conclusions: Irish Media and Interculturalism......................... 43

10. Published Resources................................................................................. 44

11. Web-based Resources................................................................................ 46

12. Acknowledgements..................................................................................... 47


1. Introduction

 

The Forum on Media and Interculturalism was held in the Hub Student Centre, Dublin City University, on March 21st & 22nd, 2002.

 

The Working Group on Media and Interculturalism, currently comprising Maeve Connolly (DCU), Debbie Ging (DCU) and Jackie Malcolm (NCAD), was established in response to recent media initiatives in the area of multiculturalism and interculturalism in Ireland. The members have a background in community arts, education, media and art production, and are currently working as media lecturers and postgraduate researchers.

 

The aim of the Forum was to

 

-          Contextualise and analyse recent media interventions

-          Promote discussion and debate amongst media producers, educators, policy-makers and students

-          Provide an overview and critical analysis of the various models of multiculturalism and interculturalism currently informing, and being constructed through, Irish media

 

This initiative was inspired by other Irish and international research projects, public seminars and conferences including  Media Forum (Integra/EU Employment initiative, Feb. 2000) Re-Mapping Dublin (Trinity College) Cultures in Conflict (DCU/St Pats). It was also informed by the ongoing work of British agencies such as the Runnymede Trust and websites e.g. Diversity Online [1] (Web resource for journalists run by EU). It is hoped that our report might be of use to educators and policy-makers in the future, as well as providing a basis for further dialogue between the diverse groups involved in this field. Response to the Forum is part of the continuing research of the working group.

 

The media and education texts selected for the Forum comprised:

 

-          Interculturalism Handbook and Guidelines (National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, Dept. of Education)

-          MA in Intercultural Studies (SALIS, Dublin City University)

-          MA Phil in Ethnic and Racial Studies (Trinity College Dublin)

-          The Irish Times, Social and Racial Affairs coverage

-          metro eireann

-          Know Racism Campaign (Dept. of Justice, Equality and Law Reform)

-          Citizen Traveller Campaign (Pavee Point, Irish Traveller Movement, Parish of the Travelling People, National Traveller Womens’ Forum)

-          Leadership Against Racism Campaign (Amnesty International)

-          Fair City (RTE Drama)

-          Black Day at Black Rock (Venus Productions/RTE Drama)

-          No Man’s Land (Vinegar Hill Productions/RTE documentary)

-          Mono (RTE)

 

Individuals from a range of institutions and agencies contributed to the forum; panels were chaired by representatives from the National Union of Journalists, the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism, the School of Communications and the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University and the Dublin Institute of Technology. Other participants included invited representatives from NGOs and government agencies working to promote interculturalism in Ireland. Each panel was followed by workshops, intended to promote discussion of the selected media texts and the various ways in which they articulate with different models of interculturalism or multiculturalism.

 

The participants who attended and contributed to the forum over the two days included students and teachers from third level educational institutions, graduate and postgraduate lecturers and researchers, and members of NGO’s and other agencies and organizations.

 

The Forum on Media and Interculturalism was funded by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and was intended to coincide with National Anti-Racism Awareness Day (March 21). The Forum was a non-profit event and all proceeds from registration were donated to the Irish Refugee Council.

 

 

2. Planning Process

The Working Group began as a series of conversations between the members; Debbie Ging, Maeve Connolly and Jackie Malcolm. As researchers and lecturers in media, film and cultural studies, we were comparing ways in which the media was generating coverage of refugees and asylum seekers in Ireland. We were initially interested in what we perceived as a tendency, in mainstream popular and public discourse, to focus on Ireland as a ‘site’ that was experiencing a considerable increase in the arrival of refugees and asylum seekers, and the way in which these social and cultural changes were being discussed and represented as a local problem that required political intervention in order to be solved.

 

Some of the journalistic discourse suggested that an appropriate way to respond to refugees and asylum seekers, both in terms of policy-making and social contact and integration, was through an imaginative empathy with their position based on the memories and experiences of Irish emigrants. Very little acknowledgement, if any, was being made of the fact that migration is caused by complex political, economic and socio-geographical changes taking place at a global level.

 

One of the initial aims of the project was to attempt to offer a different set of discursive terms and contexts to address and challenge some of the fundamental, but unquestioned, assumptions that were driving the discourses and informing the media representations. The project did not aim to solve the situation, but rather to explore and reveal the consequences and problems inherent in mediating the social changes in this way. To contextualise both the cultural shifts and the media coverage, we were aiming to explore the discursive frameworks by locating them in wider historical and contemporary frameworks.

 

To map the field of existing theoretical and critical approaches, we began to source publications and potential speakers to identify the key areas and shape the conference format. As this progressed, we began to realise that a conference organized around a traditional format of the presentation of research papers did not necessarily suit the purpose of our own project. The problems we perceived arising in the Irish media were open to interpretation from an academic and a non-academic perspective. After a year of discussion and change, we realized that one of the key concerns of our project was the practice of representation, one that could be informed, but not restricted to, a consideration of theories of representation. We also began to shape the project from the perspective of the potential audience, rather than personal or institutional research interests.

 

From this point onwards, the aim of the project was focused as a forum that could offer a response to recent campaigns and strategies that had been circulated across Irish media in attempts to promote and generate public awareness of interculturalism, citizenship and diversity. The need for a broadly educative platform was selected as the most useful and the most constructive context to enable students and educators to access and assess both how and why texts had been produced and circulated, as well as analysis of the individual texts and their reception.

 

The audience would clearly consist of students and educators engaging, at different levels of familiarity and experience, with both media production and academic discourses. This would necessitate a forum that could generate discussions that integrated the different discourses arising out of conditions of production and reception. The audience would clearly benefit from having access to a range of practitioners and theorists from the field, in a way that enabled active discussion of the texts, the decision-making processes that informed them, and the accumulation, throughout the forum, of an awareness of how those texts inter-related and might be seen to espouse or suggest models of interculturalism and citizenship.

 

The structure of the forum arose from an acknowledgement that key texts could be seen to be emerging from different sectors; public information, education, print and broadcast media. They existed within, and drew on, different modes of representation,  and would benefit from being considered in separate seminar spaces. This might also make it useful for audience members who had more interest in some areas than others. An initial panel was devised, representing education, to offer an overview of how interculturalism was being mobilized in academic discourse as well as in policy-making and to suggest how terms and definitions were being taken up, used and constantly changed in popular understandings.

 

The resulting 5 panels offered an expansive and comprehensive representation of some of the key personnel and organizations invested and involved in the work and the representation of interculturalism in Ireland. They provided specific examples of their approaches, their working methods and processes, their rationale and their resulting texts. They were devised to work both as separate fora and as a comprehensive and inter-related platform, and offered a unique and invaluable opportunity for students and educators not only to access this information, but also to engage in discussions, with experts and among themselves, about issues and practices that are lived but by no means resolved.

 

One of the responsibilities of third level institutions continues to be the generation of learning environments that enable and encourage learning as well as teaching. The time, effort and expertise put into the forum by the panel participants, the facilitators and the audience enabled valuable learning to take place over the two days and beyond. The Working Group would highly recommend this format as a means for encouraging further educative platforms for students and educators. It recommends that the institution considers, supports and encourages  these kinds of models of learning to be as valid and valuable as the traditional conference or lecture, and to consider how they might be integrated into existing courses and modules to engage learners in current issues of academic, cultural, social and political importance.

 

 

3. Structure of the Forum

The Forum presented a number of key texts, including posters, advertisements, newspaper articles and television programmes [2] ,  which address the experiences and rights of cultural or ethnic minorities in Ireland.

 

One of the primary aims of the Forum was to provide a constructive critical framework to facilitate the analysis of these media texts. The first panel, on Citizenship Education, featured presentations on University and schools curricula and provided an overview of diverse ideological and pedagogical positions. The presenters were asked to address the issue of citizenship, as a means of situating the work of educational institutions in relation to the wider public sphere.

 

In order to allow for a comparison of textual strategies and contexts of production, the media texts were grouped together in ‘Print Journalism’, ‘Public Information’, ‘Broadcast Documentary’ and ‘Broadcast Drama’ panels.  Although the majority of the selected texts are recent (produced in 2000 or 2001) they were developed within a range of institutional contexts and, as the analysis below will demonstrate, they are structured by very different objectives and modes of address. Each panel was followed by workshop sessions that enabled participants to follow up on the issues and debates raised during the panel presentations and discussions.

 

This report develops this comparative approach to analysis. It aims to identify the common reference points or dominant discourses around racism and interculturalism that structure Irish media production. It is informed by the presentations given at the Forum, by close readings of the selected media texts and (in the case of organisations) by policy statements. Critical overviews of each panel are offered, followed by reproduction of the papers and presentations made available by the presenters. The themes and key issues that were recorded on flipcharts during the workshop sessions are also offered as a summary of the discussions that emerged.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Critical Frameworks, Presentations and Workshops

4. Citizenship Education

4.1. Institutions, Policy and Terminology

The Citizenship Education panel was chaired by David Denby of the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies (SALIS) at DCU and it featured presentations on the MA in Intercultural Studies (by Agnes Maillot of SALIS, DCU), on the development of Intercultural Guidelines for the Curriculum (by Gerard Quirke of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment) and on the M.Phil in Ethnic and Racial Studies (by Ronit Lentin, Trinity College, Dublin).

 

As Panel Leader, David Denby was asked to address current issues in intercultural education. He began by referring to the ‘Know Racism’ media campaign [3] , which identifies footballer Jason Sherlock as ‘a member of Dublin’s smallest ethnic minority: Dubs with All-Ireland medals’. He noted that this mode of address suggested an ‘assimilationist’ model, whereby Sherlock’s ethnicity was brought ‘on-side’ and incorporated within Irish society through a sporting metaphor.

 

Denby noted that while Irish policy makers or campaigners rely on labels such as ‘multicultural’ or ‘intercultural’ interchangeably, these terms were highly contested, in both academic and political contexts. He emphasised the existence of competing categorisations such as ‘multi-ethnic’, ‘multi-lingual’, ‘multi-denominational’ and ‘multi-racial’.

 

Denby provided an overview of the dominant models in Europe and in the US. He referred to the work of critics such as Charles Taylor [4] ,, who argues against the notion of a ‘unitary public sphere’ opposed to multiple private spheres. Taylor proposes a form of ‘communitarianism’ instead, which acknowledges that individuals are embedded in cultures and, as such, must be recognised by public systems as citizens and as members of communities.

 

Denby noted that various critics [5] have problematised the notion that cultures should be granted automatic rights above those extended to individuals. In the second part of his presentation he theorised a pedagogical model based on the notion of intercultural communication developed by  Milton Bennett [6] among others (see also works by Adler and Banks).  This approach, which recalls the work of Bakhtin, requires the relativisation of one’s own position in order to understand the place of the other. He acknowledged, however, that this individualistic approach may not fully address questions of social power.

 

 

 

 

 

Noting that education was ‘strategically situated between the public and private spheres’, Denby emphasised the need for Irish identity to be made problematic and relative within Irish education. As an example of this practice, he referenced a recent report produced by the Irish Association of Teachers in Special Education (and co-authored by a SALIS postgraduate student). [7]

 

He concluded with a call for a form of ‘citizenship education’, focusing on the ‘specificity of Irish society’, in a way that would be markedly different from the approaches developed in France or in Germany and he suggested that one aspect of this programme might deal with Irish emigration. The issues raised by Denby’s presentation provided a context for the remainder of the Forum, and particularly the workshop discussions.

 

In her presentation on intercultural education at SALIS Agnes Maillot emphasised many common points of reference with Denby. She noted that the model developed in the MA in Intercultural Studies at DCU is highly interdisciplinary. The course is addressed towards practitioners working in a broad range of areas, including health care, social work and education and seems to focus on cultural difference, as articulated through language, literature or film, within the context of a broader analysis of processes of globalisation and internationalisation. One element of the programme, a module on ‘Multiculturalism and Ethnicity’, also deals specifically with the ‘multicultural’ experience within different European contexts.

 

Following Maillot, Gerard Quirke introduced an NCCA project on the development of Intercultural Guidelines for the primary and post-primary curricula. This project is still in its very early stages and it builds upon some of the findings of the 1999 Review of the primary curriculum. [8] Quirke outlined a number of specific aims and objectives, including the analysis of the existing curriculum, the promotion of tolerance, the acknowledgment of the Christian values of the majority and the equal recognition afforded to other groups. The Guidelines are intended to support both mediation of the curriculum and approaches to assessment.

 

Commentators have already emphasised the need for Irish educators to learn from the British experience [9] and Quirke noted that the research process included the investigation of approaches to curriculum mediation in other countries that have a history of developments in this area. The project is specifically designed to support the integration of students from diverse cultural backgrounds, and Quirke noted the importance of the work already being done in relation to Traveller children’s access to education.

 

It remains to be seen whether the Intercultural Guidelines will provide the direction and support for schools that has been lacking within the British context. [10] One possible problem with the review process is the apparent absence of any formalised relationship between the NCCA and University researchers engaged in various forms of Intercultural education. [11] This may serve to limit the possibility for a more extensive revision of Irish educational institutions and structures.

 

The final presentation, given by Ronit Lentin, began with a critique of the apparent ‘cosiness’ of the panel, focusing on the absence of the word ‘racism’ from the discussion. She defined racism as a political system which aims to regulate bodies, and defined multiculturalism as a policy response to the perceived problem of pluralist societies. She repeatedly emphasised that, in opposition to the multicultural agenda, cultures must be regarded as contested rather than as fixed. She noted that within social science, race was addressed primarily as a discourse but she also rejected the uncritical use of categorisations such as  culture and ethnicity in place of the term race.

 

In addressing the issue of citizenship education Lentin emphasised that, for members of certain racialised groups within the current Irish context, citizenship could not be regarded as a certainty. She noted that while the MPhil in Ethnic and Racial Studies at TCD had been established (in 1997) in response to rising levels of racism associated with immigration, one of its key objectives was the analysis of established forms of racism within Irish society.

 

Although the M.Phil targets social science graduates it is also specifically aimed (like the SALIS programme) at those working in ‘human service delivery’ in health care, education or social work. Lentin also addressed the issue of the Multicultural University, and its theorisation in the British context.

 

In general terms it seemed apparent that, while the SALIS programme focused on European models, Lentin’s critical framework was more directly informed by reference to British theory and practice. The panel raised a number of problems in relation to Irish media interventions,  particularly surrounding modes of address. 

 


 

4.2. Citizenship Education: Introductory Remarks

David Denby, School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies, DCU

 

The introduction to the Parekh report The Future of Multi-ethnic Britain says the following about citizenship:

 

Citizens are both individuals and members of religious and cultural communities. Britain is both a community of citizens and a community of communities, both a liberal and a multicultural society, and needs to reconcile their sometimes conflicting requirements.

 

The notion of citizenship which has come down to us from the Enlightenment and from the American and French Revolutions is based on the twin notions of individualism and universality. It presupposes a unitary public sphere in which the same rights and responsibilities apply to all. In many ways, the French model of secularism, laïcité, is a perfect expression of this model: the state (and crucially the state education system) applies the same rules to all: the religious and cultural preferences of individuals, families or communities are respected, but are a matter for the private sphere and are thus separate from citizenship. The famous case of the chador, where Muslim girls were excluded from a French school for wearing the headscarf, dramatises the tensions which the French model throws up. But these tensions are real, and go beyond France: the debate between liberals and communitarians is, among other things, about balancing the competing claims of universalistic individualism and communitarian (or ethnic) specificity. The boundary between public and private spheres is crucial here, as John Rex’s model of the multicultural society makes clear. One of the most powerful liberal critiques of the communitarian position is that, because the private sphere is the area in which family and gender relations dominate, communitarianism is bad for women’s and children’s rights.

 

Education is one area which almost by definition straddles the division between the public and private spheres: as an institution, the school takes children from diverse private situations and places them together in a unitary public space. One of the questions which is arising in Ireland today is to what extent and how schools should adapt to the presence of new ethnic identities. I offer no answer to this question, but possible answers would lie between two opposed and equally unacceptable extremes: on the one hand, a republican (in the French rather than the Irish sense of the term) refusal to countenance any institutional change, on the (false) grounds that the school system is universalist and culturally neutral; on the other, a culturalist position which requires that the state accedes to any claim for recognition from ethnic or cultural groups (a proliferation of faith schools might be one consequence of this tendency). In reality, the process of adaptation will require both the system and its users to make concessions.

 

I would like, finally, to make a few remarks about intercultural communication and learning. I will be referring here to the works by Bennett, Adler and Banks referred to in the bibliography. Speaking of Northern Ireland, Edna Longley has argued (pp.6-7) that interculturalism is a more productive term than multiculturalism: parity of esteem, she says, can lead to a situation where each (or every) identified group becomes isolated within a static definition of its own identity, whereas interculturalism places an emphasis on the dynamic which exists between groups, the ways in which they can learn from each other through dialogue and reciprocity. Much American work on interculturalism is built on the premise that we are all rooted in a culture, and that that culture plays an important role in determining our assumptions, attitudes and expectations. This is what makes intercultural communication potentially problematic. But the central claim being made in these approaches to interculturalism is that we can learn to go beyond this cultural determination, developing greater openness to the world-views of other cultures. Milton J. Bennett’s ‘Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity’ is well known. It attempts to describe a spectrum of attitudes towards otherness on which people can be situated and through which an individual can pass in a process of learning. This spectrum goes from the ethnocentric at one end to the ethnorelative at the other. It is clear that the ethnorelative position is seen as preferable, and other authors, while using different terms (‘dynamic in-between-ness’, ‘the multicultural person’), have also suggested the desirability of this set of attitudes. It may be useful if I isolate three significant components of this kind of approach to intercultural communication:

1.   being sensitive to the culture of the other presupposes an awareness of one’s own situatedness, ie. being prepared to relativise one’s own culture;

2.   cultural adaptation is not the same as cultural assimiliation. Culture is a process in which we engage, not an object which we acquire, so that intercultural learning is a question of adding to a repertoire rather than substituting one culture for another.

3.   The overriding aim is not to obtain static knowledge about other cultures, but to learn how to engage in dynamic communication with individuals from another culture.

 

References

Charles Taylor et al., ed. Amy Gutman, Multiculturalism. Examining the Politics of Recognition, Princeton University Press, 1994

 

Edna Longley and Declan Kiberd, Multi-culturalism: the View from the two Irelands,  Cork University Press in association with Centre for Cross-Border Studies, Armagh, 2001.